Movie review: ‘Adrift’ keeps getting lost at sea

Ed Symkus More Content Now

Friday

Jun 1, 2018 at 6:00 AM

It opens with a troubling scene of disorientation: A young woman wakes up in the cabin of a flooded, foundering boat, with blood on her face, bruises on her body and, realizing something pretty darn bad has happened, starts screaming for someone named Richard.

She’s Tami (Shailene Woodley), a free spirit who travels the world till she runs out of money, works any sort of job to get more, enjoys wherever she is, then moves on to her next adventure. Richard (Sam Claflin) is also a free spirit, the sailor she meets while working at a marina when he steers his boat up to the dock.

But none of that information is revealed till the camera pulls out of the opening scene, and an exterior aerial shot shows the damaged boat in the middle of nowhere, with Tami alone, yelling out Richard’s name.

A subtitle pops up — “five months earlier” — signaling the first of countless flashbacks that tell how these two people met. Before long the film becomes a running series of then and now, of Tami and Richard getting to know each other, becoming closer, and setting sail on a journey, and of Tami desperately searching for, then finding the badly injured Richard, and how they attempt to survive the elements and thirst and hunger, after their boat has lost its mast, its mainsail, its radio, and is drifting far from any shipping lanes.

The story is supposed to follow their trip from Tahiti to California in a small pleasure craft. If you haven’t watched the trailer, which blatantly gives away most of the film’s plot turns, you won’t know what happened to them or the whereabouts of Richard until the script supplies that information. One of the two is addressed pretty early, while the other is saved, in effective dramatic manner, till late in the film. (Hint: Don’t watch the trailer.)

But two things it would serve you well to know in advance is that Tami is a vegetarian (no, there’s nothing about cannibalism here) and that there’s a casual mention of hallucinations at sea.

As this is mostly a two-person movie, it’s a good thing that both Woodley and Claflin are good at relaxed, almost off-the-cuff banter, which is prevalent in the lighthearted flashbacks. In those scenes, and even when things get serious, the trio of scriptwriters has provided some excellent dialogue for the talented actors to bounce off of each other.

But the film also comes up against a number of problems that neither words nor acting skill is going to assuage. There are too many scenes of Tami alone and either talking or yelling to herself. There’s a completely unnecessary one of her in peril, away from the boat, that serves only as a bit of filler. The gimmick of printed words and numbers showing how much time has gone by — “five days adrift, 18 days adrift” — wears out its welcome. Unfortunately, things turn dull, tedious, and those flashes eventually also become examples of filler rather than making for an interesting backstory.

Fortunately, there’s also eventually some hints, then a clear explanation of what went wrong, and that part of the film is terrifically produced and both exciting and absolutely horrifying. The running time is a mere 90 minutes, but for no good reason, it feels longer. Then the ending comes rolling up far too quickly. The acting is solid, but the structure of the script and the film’s pacing don’t fare well. A saving grace is the inclusion of Tom Waits’ gentle love song “Picture in a Frame” over the end credits.

— Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.